Kozinski, chief judge for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,
concluded in a ruling today that U.S. District Judge Richard Jones
had made “numerous, serious and obvious errors” when he declined to
issue an injunction against Sea Shepherd for its high-seas battle
against Japanese whalers.

The three-judge panel ordered that the case be removed from
Jones’ jurisdiction and turned over to another Seattle district
judge drawn at random.

Meanwhile, the Institute of Cetacean Research — the Japanese
whaling organization — continues its effort to get a
contempt-of-court citation issued against Sea Shepherd, which has
increased its efforts to disrupt Japanese whaling in the Southern
Ocean.

Sea Shepherd remains under a U.S. Court of Appeals injunction,
which requires that the organization’s ships operate safely and
stay 500 yards away from the Japanese vessels.

I’ll provide an update on Sea Shepherd’s activities in a
separate blog post, but let me first tell you more about Kozinski’s
ruling (PDF 238 kb), which finds nothing commendable about any
of Sea Shepherd’s actions.

Shiver me timbers! It’s that time of year again. A special day
to talk like a pirate.

We be plunderin’ the Internet for amusing scraps on this
International Talk Like a Pirate Day. If ye want to know how this
special day came to be, heave ho and go back to
“Watching Our Water Ways” from last year, or visit the official website of
the scurvy dogs who started it all.

This year, I be offering ye some video treasure, songs and such.
Patrick Penzance kicks up a yarn in the video player on this page.
And the videos below should bring ye round to the spirit of the
event.

“Talk Like a Pirate Day” is almost here. It will be this Sunday,
Sept. 19. All folks, good and bad, are called on to, well, talk
like a pirate for a day.

Strangely enough, this international event started out with a
couple of
guys — John “Ol’ Chumbucket” Baur and Mark “Cap’n Slappy”
Summers joking around while playing racquetball. They started
poking fun and encouraging each other in pirate lingo. The two
celebrated the annual occasion of talking like pirates somewhat
quietly among friends for seven years until 2002, when they sent
the idea to syndicated columnist
Dave Barry, who made it an international event.

So now these two guys have a website, TalkLikeaPirate.com, which
has grown through the years and includes tips and all manner of fun
and games.

There’s also the official “International Talk Like a Pirate Fan
Page” on Facebook,
and I’m sure this crazy idea has started producing some major booty
for them and a good number of other folks who have jumped aboard
the Jolly Roger. I’ll leave you to investigate these treasures on
your own.

In the spirit of Amusing Monday, I’d like to share with you this
video about Robot Pirates, which I found amusing, though it
probably has nothing to do with Talk Like a Pirate Day.

But the event was clearly being celebrated by Freaking News and
a bunch of folks who created Photoshop images on the theme “If
pirates ruled the world.” Most include some well-known people
dressed as pirates in various situations, which I think you’ll find
amusing. Since the contest has been going on several years, there
are a lot of photos, organized here in galleries: